Son of Silvercon 2023: A Gem in Vegas (Patreon)

In mid-October I headed to the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson for the inaugural Son of Silvercon, to which Kevin the Chief Wombat kindly invited me as Guest of Honor. I was one of three guests, the other two being author Sarah Hoyt and her husband Dan; and Baen author and editor DJ Butler, neither of whom I’ve met in person. But I was attending the con to meet in person many people whom I’ve known online for years: not just Sarah, but Kevin (a long time fan, like “I know you from Livejournal” long time), Caitlin “Mama Bunny” Walsh (ditto), author Melissa McShane and her husband, whose work I’ve been enjoying for years, and Holly, mistress of sunshine, who can always be counted on for an optimism check that feels like a reality check (and isn’t that its own form of magic).

Interestingly, other than these people I don’t think any of the attendees had heard of me! But we fixed that by the end of the weekend because at under thirty people I was able to learn everyone’s name and a little bit of their stories, and they were all very cool people. I can’t think of a time I thought ‘I need to find an excuse to get away from this person.’ Every conversation was engaging. Every person was interesting. The photographer said in a blog comment that it was like a family reunion with none of the bad people and that’s exactly how it felt to me. Well, and like a constant party where no one is boring and there is always a fascinating topic as you drift from group to group. You also never got lost looking for people: since the con was so small we had only two rooms, the single meeting room for panels and the con suite (which was, bar none, the most well stocked con suite I’ve been in given the size of the con, and which would have shamed the con suite at many, many larger ones: well done, Jolie!). Our dealer’s room was the con suite bedroom, which worked out magnificently: people would come eat, talk, and browse the offerings, and you could continue to chat while perusing the things for sale. A white bedspread makes a nice backdrop for most science fiction books, which are colorful.

Holly brought most of her family which meant we had teens and littles under foot (or towering overhead, but then everyone is taller than me!), and that was awesome too. At no point did I feel the group ever made this feel unnatural, and after too many cons that insist that only adults are eligible for attendance it was refreshing.

Panels and Events

We had a laid back con schedule with one panel at a time and yet we never stuck to the schedule…which is not to say that the topics weren’t discussed, it was just ad hoc. Or someone would say “I wish we’d gotten to x” and then we discussed it right there! I think the only event on the schedule that happened when it was supposed to was the Baen Traveling Roadshow. But I think the con benefited by its informality; corralling people who are already having fun through some artificially rigid conception of the timeblock would have broken the flow of the party atmosphere.

The size of the con also made for lots of one-on-one discussions (or close to them), and one of my favorite memories was DJ (wearing his Baen editor hat) talking to aspiring author Dan about the routes to publication in a way both candid about the many pitfalls, and encouraging about the possibilities. If anyone had talked to Aspiring Me in that way, back in the 2000s, I would have been over the moon. (Admittedly, I also liked this moment because it made me realize I am happy with my self-publishing choices, and I am now certain that unless some extraordinary situation happened, I would not prefer to go the traditional publishing route. There is something relaxing about being content with how things have fallen out.)

There was a lot of talk about writing, inevitably (and reading)… we had some live music noodling, courtesy of DJ and his guitar, and some art demos (I even taught someone how to draw a straight line!), and I think the kids did some dancing and swimming, so as cons went it had a broad spectrum of represented arts.

This is also where I say that I got to go out for surprisingly delicious sushi and hot tea, and it was so good that we had it again the following day as take-out. I did not expect good sushi in the desert, but if you are next to a major resort city that gets its restaurant supplies flown in all the time, then… you will be surprised what is available.

Games

One of the things on the schedule was gaming at night, and surprisingly this we did do, because apparently geeks bond and network over games the way my old coworkers did over alcohol in bars. Only four of us decided to embark on the herculean task of learning Twilight Imperium from DJ and Dan (owner of the game), however, which is a lot like a far more complex version of Cosmic Encounter. Merely setting up the game took a couple of hours, and took up two tables shoved together. As usual, when I play a new game, I decide to play the most interesting story, rather than attempting to win, and I got my wish when my cat aliens were the first to set foot on the ancient ruined planet of Mekatol Rex, and open the Galactic Senate… while simultaneously losing their three homeworlds to Melissa, whose fire-being aliens conquered them with her giant death star thing. My only regret there was that she didn’t also supernova the sun, because then I could have played tragic ballads about the forever-loss of our feline birthworlds.

Despite this I was somehow the holder of the most winning points when we halted the game, mostly because Sintra decided to nobly support me in my aims (I gave him a planet as a thank you). My reign as cat empress would have ended the next turn because every single other player, other than Lee’s peripatetic void aliens, was poised to take the ancient planet away from me. But I would still have been the first to the central planet, and no one could take that away from our ghosts!

Possibly the funniest part of the whole venture was that every time someone did something, DJ would shake his head regretfully and say, “So aggressive. We should get him/her.” About all of us, doing even the most innocuous of things! We spent the rest of the weekend shaking our heads sadly and saying “we should get him” at random intervals.

Which is, of course, the kind of thing gaming is supposed to inspire.

I will also kindly refrain from reminding Dan of the fate of his fish alien fleet. It was nothing personal. I just needed to bravely stand in battle, and either fall or triumph, and he happened to be the one who showed up to test me. Can you win against cat aliens who are not afraid to die? Only the players know the story. But it was a valiant battle, and will be sung of when the cat-aliens are a memory in the ruins of Mekatol Rex.

Thank you, Dan and DJ, for teaching us the game, it was fantastic.

Sales

Knowing the con membership was likely to be small I did not bring much to sell and, as I said, almost no one there had heard of me. Despite that, I sold 75% of what I brought, which was much better than I expected. Sarah brought a bunch of books that also got sold, and DJ had some Baen books to give away from the roadshow; Caitlin sold some Mama Bunny books, and several people had business cards they left out that wandered off. So the dealer’s room, which I refuse to call the dealer’s bedroom, did a brisk business, and I’m glad I brought stuff to peddle!

Vibe Check

Like most modern SF/F cons, SoS was politically homogenous; unless you’re attending an enormous media con, which is more like a giant shopping mall that wants to part you from your dollars in exchange for events and merchandise, then every single con you go to is going to have a specific political slant. I felt safe and enjoyed the vibe, but in my experience, conservatives reading my wild stuff full of trigendered aliens, confused space elves, and collectivist cat cultures are more likely to shrug and say “not my thing” than they are to try to run me out on a rail. There are conservatives who’d pillory me for the stuff I write, but they seem to be fewer than the liberals who would pillory me for the things I believe. I’m not thrilled that things have fallen out this way, while recognizing it as an inevitable backlash to the way sf/f cons have been run for years as “neutral environments” that were nothing of the sort.

One day I hope we reach a place where people of truly diverse intellectual viewpoints can hang out together and talk about art and writing, but I don’t know how to get there from here. I will say that this con was racially and ethnically diverse despite its small size, and that more people there were bilingual (or multilingual) than I think I’ve seen in a long time. Also, an age diversity spread, from 9 years old to people who didn’t want to talk about their ages, and several veterans, including John the Cheerful Ex-Interrogator, whose stories were fantastic. Also, he brought vitamin-C drops. Smart man.

Overall

The Vegas climate was gorgeous, and the vegetation fascinating, and I enjoyed sitting outside or walking laps around the hotel for exercise. We also saw the eclipse, something I photographed over my shoulder, and that felt appropriate for a science fiction convention (and the first of its name! Auspicious!). I met many really cool people, and got to listen to them talk about the things that interested them, which… probably made me a less useful Guest of Honor, since I had to keep reminding myself to talk about myself. I got to meet people I’d been hoping to, and they were all as lovely as I hoped they would be: Chief Wombat was a gracious host, Sarah was indeed the Big Sister I anticipated (and shook me a few times by the scruff of the neck in a useful way to prove it!), Caitlin and Holly were a great delight, and Melissa was just as I imagined she’d be from her work. Also her husband’s hair literally could flow in the wind. Very impressive. All the strangers who came mostly to support Sarah were cool and funny, or shy and interesting, or full of dreams I recognized and hope they fulfill gloriously. The eldest of us were holding significant cultural/fandom memory; the youngest of us were starry-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for adventure. It was truly a lovely time.

I’m hearing that next year’s GoH will be a major headliner, and that they hope to attract at least 250 people so they can break even. They’re planning a fiction contest for teens that will hand out awards at the con, plus art show, science track, and a bigger dealer’s room, and they want to keep the family-friendly vibe going. I’m hoping they net one of their two prospective guests and I get to go again! If I do, this time I’ll bring my own teen. She can marvel in person at the ridiculous sphere-thingy.

If any of this seems like your jam, keep an eye on https://fission-chan.org/ for registration info. The target next year is in July, so that parents don’t have to worry about school dates, and because no one goes to Vegas in July… but what do we care, it’s not like we’re going outside. *grin*

Thanks, Kevin, for a great first year event! May there be many more!